The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4)

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘Would you care to be driven home?’

  ‘No, thank you, I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘Then I’ll bid you good-day,’ Stephen said.

  She returned to the school. He drove up the lane. The afternoon sky was very dark, the black clouds rearing up thick and fast, blown by the wild north westerly wind.

  After the floods, there were frosts again. One morning when Betony arrived at school, she found the stoves still unlit, and the caretaker, Miles, waiting to see her.

  ‘Seems we’re out of coal,’ he said. ‘A skiddle of slack, that’s all there is.’

  ‘But we had half a ton not long ago! The heap was up to the back-house window.’

  ‘That’s just the trouble,’ Miles said. ‘Anyone can get at that coal. They’ve only got to climb the fence. It ent the first time we’ve had thieves in here in the cold weather.’

  ‘It’s the first time they’ve left us without any coal whatsoever! Do they want the children to freeze to death?’

  Betony went to the post office and sent a wire to the coal merchant, ordering half a ton of coal to be delivered at once, that very day. She returned to the school and, with Miles and Miss Vernon to help, moved the desks to the back of the room. When the children arrived, they were told to keep their coats on, and Betony, standing in front of them, led them in a game of ‘O’Grady Says’. After an hour of this, Miss Vernon played the piano and the children sang songs of their own choosing, for singing too helped to keep them warm. At eleven o’clock, however, a telegram arrived from the coal merchant to say that the coal could not be delivered till the following Monday. The maximum temperature in the school was thirty-eight degrees. Betony had to admit defeat. She sent the children home and closed the school.

  As she and Miss Vernon were leaving, Stephen and two of his men arrived, with twelve sacks of coal in the back of the cart, brought from his own stock at the farm.

  ‘Emma tells me you’re out of coal. She’s very upset at being sent home. Will this see you through till your order comes?’

  Certainly it would see them through. Betony unlocked the gate again to let the horse and cart drive in. She watched the three men unload the coal.

  ‘If you have trouble with your order, let me know,’ Stephen said, ‘and I’ll send in to town to fetch it for you.’

  By twelve o’clock the stoves were lit. By half-past one the rooms were warm. The desks were all back in place again, and Betony rang the school bell, to tell her pupils throughout the village that the school was open after all. Miss Vernon came and stood by her.

  ‘Mr Wayman is very kind. That’s the second time he’s come to our rescue. He never used to take such an interest in the school. Not such a personal interest anyway. But now he can’t do enough for us.’

  Betony pulled on the bell-rope and the bell rang out in its turret on the roof.

  ‘Not so surprising as all that, now that he has a child here with us.’

  There were outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in the area that spring. A farmer at Stamley lost his pedigree herd. Everywhere, throughout the district, precautions were taken against the infection, so mysterious in its ways, and the movement of cattle was controlled.

  At Holland Farm, as on other farms, there were buckets of antiseptic fluid at every entrance, and anyone who had been beyond its boundaries had to dip his booted feet in this and sluice the wheels of vehicles. Stephen was in the cartshed one day when Morton George drove straight through the gateway without stopping, although he had come from Steadworth Mill.

  ‘It’s all a waste of flaming time!’ he said when Stephen challenged him. ‘How do we know it does any good?’

  ‘How do we know it doesn’t?’ Stephen said.

  He made the man dip his boots in the bucket and sluice the axles and wheels of the cart.

  ‘If you disobey me again over this, you’ll get your cards without delay!’

  The outbreaks died away at last. Stephen and his neighbours breathed again. The weather improved in April, although not much, and the ploughs were able to get out on the land.

  ‘If we had a tractor,’ Chris said, ‘we should soon catch up on all this lost time.’ He was bitterly jealous of the two tractors so busy at Outlands, crawling about the green and brown fields. ‘Surely now that you’re saving on my school fees ‒’

  ‘But I shouldn’t be saving them,’ Stephen said, ‘if I spent the money on a tractor instead.’

  ‘It would pay for itself in no time at all if you were to sack one of the men.’

  ‘I prefer to keep men in work.’

  ‘Even Morton George?’ said Chris.

  ‘Look,’ Stephen said, somewhat curtly, ‘I said you could come and work on the farm, but I didn’t say you could take over!’

  But he smiled to soften his words a little, and passed The Farmer and Stockbreeder across to the boy, open at a page on beet-growing.

  Chris tried to enlist Bob Tupper’s support, but Bob was a horse-man through and through.

  ‘Don’t speak to me about tractors,’ he said. ‘A tractor ent human, like a horse. And it don’t seem natural to me, neither, to hafta look back on your work all the time instead of forrards, the proper way.’

  ‘At least a tractor doesn’t eat its head off when it’s not working.’

  ‘No, nor it don’t manure the land, neither.’

  ‘Hah! Manure!’ Chris said in disgust. ‘We’re up to our ears in it on this farm!’

  ‘You speak for yourself, young master,’ said Bob.

  Chris was very keen to plough. He wanted to do every job on the farm. Once he and Bob were in the same field; Bob was ploughing with Beau and Bonnie; Chris with the geldings, Spick and Span; while over on the other side of the hedge, in an Outlands field, Gerald on his tractor lurched to and fro, completing four furrows in less time than Chris could do one. Once he came to the hedge and shouted.

  ‘How’re you peasants doing up there? Have you ever heard of a thing called progress?’

  Chris took no notice but ploughed on, his young face tight-set under his cap.

  ‘Peasants!’ he said, later, to Bob. ‘That just about hits the nail on the head! Why not use oxen and be done with it?’ But, as Bob remarked to Stephen one day, in spite of the boy’s bitterness, his work in the field was always good, whether ploughing or drilling, and he was improving all the time. He might look down on the use of horses but his team was always well turned out and he worked them with as much patience as Bob did himself.

  Sometimes Stephen had worried about Chris, coming so young to the work of the farm, without having seen the outside world. He feared that the boy would become cloddish. But Chris had a busy, adventurous mind. He read a great deal; kept abreast of new things; he was outward-looking, ambitious and keen. He was the sort of young man who would build the future of agriculture ‒ if only he were given the chance. Stephen wished he could give in to him and bring modern methods to Holland Farm, but he felt that the bad times had come to stay and his instinct counselled cautiousness.

  ‘Take John Challoner,’ he said. ‘He spent big while the going was good. Now he needs to pull in his horns and he’s finding it difficult to do.’

  ‘At least he’s got tractors,’ Chris said. ‘At least he’s got electricity.’ Then, after a moment, he said: ‘At least he keeps hunters and rides to hounds.’

  ‘Do you want to ride to hounds?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘I’d like to be able to afford it, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s just it, Challoner can’t afford it,’ Stephen said.

  The weather turned wet again. Very little ploughing was done. The two war veterans, Tupper and Hopson, were heard singing the hymn-tune, ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’ as they went about the farm. But the words they sang were those they had so often sung in Flanders: ‘Raining! Raining! Raining! Always bloody well raining!’ And Tupper said to Morton George, ‘I don’t think it’s stopped since this ruddy government of yours got in!’

  The lambing season was
bad that year. Stephen was out at all hours, helping his shepherd, Henry Goodshaw, but their losses were heavy all the same, and he grew quite hardened to the task of burying dead lambs.

  One day in the pasture at Wood End, he found three dead Iambs in an old disused well. Morton George had thrown them there.

  ‘I didn’t think it’d hurt,’ George said, ‘what with the weather being so cold.’

  ‘Have you smelt them?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘It ent my job, anyway. It’s the shepherd’s job to bury his lambs.’

  ‘Then leave them where he can see them, man, and don’t go flinging them into holes.’

  This was a trying time for Stephen. He was suffering from lack of sleep. He knew he must keep a check on his temper whenever he dealt with Morton George, for the man was growing more slovenly and every day brought cause for complaint. Pig-swill inadequately boiled; barn doors left swinging in the wind; coils of barbed wire thrown down and left where cattle could entwine their legs.

  ‘If that was me I should sack him as soon as look at him,’ said Chris. ‘He’s more trouble than he’s worth.’

  ‘I’ve never had to sack a man yet and I hope I never shall,’ Stephen said.

  Round about the middle of April, however, something happened that changed his mind. The mare, Tivvy, was in foal. It was a month or so to her time, and she was therefore excused from work. Yet Morton George, with a heavy load of manure to cart, put Tivvy into the shafts and drove her uphill to the Eighteen Acre. It happened that Tupper was in the field. He unyoked the mare and led her home. But the harm was already done by then. Tivvy miscarried and the foal was born dead. Bob Tupper was beside himself. He threatened to take Morton George apart.

  ‘Bloody lazy pigging sod! He took the mare because she was nearest! It saved him fetching Beau from the meadow. You’d better keep him away from me, Mr Wayman, ’cos I’m in the mood to break his neck!’

  But Stephen himself had had enough of Morton George. The man was useless. He was given his cards.

  ‘You think I don’t know why you’re sacking me? It ent on account of a bloody horse! It’s because I’m a union man, that’s why it is! You bloody farmers is all the same!’

  ‘There’s an extra thirty shillings there. That’s instead of a week’s notice. You can go this minute, without delay.’

  ‘I shall see my union about this!’

  ‘Just be sure and tell them the truth!’

  ‘What about my cottage? Are you putting me out in the road?’

  ‘You can stay in the cottage till the end of the month. Then I’ll want it for a new man.’

  In fact Morton George was gone by Easter. He left the district with his wife and three boys and was seen driving a cart towards Capleton. When Stephen went to the empty cottage, he found that the place was no more than a shell. Doors and floorboards had been removed and burnt on a bonfire in the garden. Some of the rafters had been sawn through and the glass had been broken in all the windows. The kitchen range had been smashed; so had the copper in the scullery; and in the overgrown garden behind, fruit trees and lilacs had been cut down.

  But there was a worse discovery still, for in the pasture behind the cottage, an in-calf heifer was found dying, and the vet said she had been poisoned by eating yew. There were bits of it still in her mouth, and a yew tree grew in the cottage garden. There was nothing the vet could do. She died while he was examining her.

  Chapter Ten

  At Easter the weather improved for a while. The nights were frosty but the days were fair. There was a bustle on the farm and all possible teams were out, ploughing, harrowing, drilling seed, busy wherever the ground allowed. Chris was in a fever from dawn to dusk. He thought and talked of nothing but work. And Jamesy, home for the holidays, followed his brother everywhere.

  Joanna was in the grip of a different fever. Her school-friend, Elaine, was staying at the farm for the Easter week-end, and the two girls were writing a novel. They shut themselves away in the attic and played the gramophone all day, mostly Mozart and Mendelssohn.

  ‘Music enables me to think,’ said Joanna. ‘It makes me aware of life and death.’

  Did Elaine know what she meant?

  ‘I think,’ said Elaine, her eyes half-closed: ‘I think Persephone will die when she thinks Julian has forsaken her.’

  ‘But Julian, of course, comes back a rich man.’

  ‘Having intended all along to marry her …’

  ‘He goes to the churchyard and sees her grave …’ Mendelssohn had come to an end. Joanna reached out and changed the record. She put on the Mozart Sonata in D.

  Emma, attracted by the music, climbed the steep stairs to the attic playroom, but found the door locked against her.

  ‘Go away!’ Joanna shouted. ‘We’re very busy. We need to think.’

  ‘I want to come in and listen to the gramophone.’

  ‘Well, you can’t!’ Joanna said.

  Emma, having rattled the door-knob in vain, turned and went downstairs again. She slipped past Aunt Doe and Mrs Bessemer, who were busy swilling out the dairy, and left the house by the side door.

  Outside, in the barnyard, Jamesy was helping Chris to load sacks of grain onto a trailer. They were sowing barley in the Goose Ground.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Jamesy said.

  ‘I want to ride behind the drill.’

  ‘You run along in, there’s a good girl, and Aunt Doe will find you something to do.’

  ‘No,’ Emma said. She turned away.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Jamesy asked.

  ‘Nowhere in particular,’ Emma said.

  ‘Well, whatever you do, don’t go down to the bottom yard.’

  ‘Why, what’s in the bottom yard?’

  ‘Never you mind what’s there,’ said Chris. ‘Just do as you’re told and keep away.’

  ‘Is it a surprise?’ Emma asked.

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s nothing at all. Now mind out of the way or you’ll get run over.’

  When they had gone, with their load of seed, Emma went into the barn and climbed the ladder into the hayloft. There was much to be seen from the hayloft door. Half the farm lay spread below. She could see her father, with Spick and Span, harrowing the green winter wheat on the slopes of the One-and-Twenty. She could see three ploughs at work in the Freelands. She could see the shepherd and his boy, moving about the lambing-pens, and could even see a hint of steam rising from the backs of some of the ewes.

  When she climbed down the ladder again the spaniel, Sam, came running to her, wagging his little stump of a tail.

  ‘Rats?’ Emma said. ‘Have you seen any rats? You come with me, I’ll find you some rats.’

  She left the barn, with the dog at her heels, and walked down the track to the bottom yard, a place used for stock in wintertime, on three sides enclosed by shelters and stalls. She opened the gate and went into the yard. The spaniel chose to remain outside.

  ‘Rats? Any rats?’ she said to him, but although he wagged his tail again, he made no move to follow her. ‘Oh, very well, you please yourself.’

  She pushed the gate and it latched shut. Sam stood peering at her through the bars. Then, with a whimper, he ran off home. Emma stood alone in the empty yard.

  Lately, the muck had been carted away, and the concrete ground had been scraped clean. The open-fronted shelters had been mucked out and the cobblestones had been hosed down. There was nothing to see in the shelters or stalls. There was only something in the middle of the yard; something bulky, rounded in shape, covered by a stack-cloth weighted with stones. Emma went closer, two steps at a time. She removed one of the big stones and lifted a corner of the cloth.

  The dead cow’s eyes were open wide, but were covered by a thick clouded film. Its black tongue hung curling out of its mouth; its lips and nostrils were covered in slime. Emma shrank back with a little cry, letting the stack-cloth fall again.

  She ran to the gate and climb
ed over, tearing her pinafore on a nail. There was a hedge at the side of the track, and when she had pushed her way through the thorns, she ran across the pasture into the coppice. From there she passed into Stoney Lane; ran full pelt past Lilac Cottage; and squeezed through the gate onto Puppet Hill. She couldn’t run up the steep track because of the terrible stitch in her side, but once she was over the brow of the hill, she ran like the wind down the other side, scattering sheep in all directions. Her feet went twinkling over the turf. She ran as though she would never stop.

  In the old walled garden at Cobbs, Betony was working with her mother, putting in sticks to support the peas.

  ‘We’ve got company,’ Beth remarked, and Betony, following her mother’s glance, saw the child at the garden gate. ‘Is it the gipsies as usual?’

  ‘No, it’s Emma Wayman from Holland Farm.’

  ‘What’s she doing, flitting about?’

  ‘I think she’s probably looking for me.’

  The moment Betony opened the gate, Emma turned as though she would flee, but Betony caught her by the arm and drew her inside. The child’s dark brown hair, usually so neat, was utterly wild and had lost its ribbon; her dress and pinafore were torn, her face and hands were covered in scratches, and she was muddy from head to foot. ‘Whatever’s happened to you, my child?’

  ‘Nothing! Nothing!’ Emma said. Then, suddenly, she was in tears. Her face was pressed against Betony’s apron. ‘I don’t like it at home any more! Can I come and live with you?’

  ‘Poor little girl,’ Betony murmured. Her hand was on the child’s hot head. ‘Let’s go indoors, anyway, and do something about those cuts.’

  Her mother spoke from across the garden.

  ‘Do you want me to come and help?’

  ‘No, there’s no need,’ Betony said.

  Talking cheerfully all the time, she led the child into the kitchen and sat her in a chair under the window. She fetched warm water, iodine, lint, and bathed the bleeding cuts and scratches.

  ‘How do you come to be in this mess?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Emma said. She squinted down at herself in surprise and tried to brush the mud from her pinafore. ‘I ran and ran, right down the hill. I couldn’t stop and I fell in the mud.’